Election date due to be called today: The prospects of the BNP

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is set to announce today that a general election in Britain will be held on May 6 and the important issue for black and minority ethnic communities should be what prospects does the election hold for the BNP.

In the Independent today James Bethell, director of the Nothing British group accused mainstream parties of ignoring the plight of “aliented white working-class voters” and providing more support for the BNP. (Independent: 6 April)

Bethell warned that up to five million people was angry about immigration and the BNP had struck a nerve with many which could give the party 12 percent of the vote in the general election and make it “a permanent force in British politics.”

On May 6 the BNP will field a record number of 300 candidates, possibly more; and with the help of Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) the BNP can now boast that they have ethnic minority recruits in their party. (Read Has the EHRC made the BNP a more dangerous party?)

Bethell warned that the media and political party leaders’s portrayal of the BNP as fascists thugs is outdated. The BNP are now putting up presentable candidates for election as well as women.

In November 2008 a leaked membership list of the BNP shockingly exposed policemen, district nurses, preachers and teachers as members. Gone are the days when members of the BNP could be described as unemployed, uneducated fascists.

Bethell said that the mainstream parties have made the situation worse by not confronting the BNP directly in debate or dealing with the topics that has made so many former Labour supporters turn to the BNP. However, it is has not been considered that the mainstream parties have not given the BNP an equal platform simply because they are afraid that many British people share their views and do not want this televised or made public.

When BNP leader Nick Griffin appeared on BBC1’s Question Time, he stated on the show that the Ku Klux Klan, an extreme white supremacist group in America was non violent. Despite this he won public support after a YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph indicated that 22% of voters would consider backing the BNP in a local, European or general election. (Daily Telegraph: 23 October, 2009)

Avril Ormsby, in a Reuter’s article on May 3, 2008, said that traditional left-wing, Labour voters were turning to the BNP after discontent with the party.

However, this does not make sense by any stretch of the imagination. Why would traditional socialists dedicated to an equal society turn to the BNP? A party which represents only whites and actively believes in the repatriation of all non whites back to their country of origin.

What appears to be happening in Britain is that the recession has brought the latent racist attitudes of the British public to the surface. This is the conclusion which the media and mainstream parties do not want to face or even consider, but it explains why British voters are now turning to the far-right.

If Britain is indeed a tolerant and multicultural society then a recession should not bring about racist attitudes or a shift towards the political right.

The BNP’s immigration policy is quite clear, it opposes all non-whites from staying in this country and it opposes the growing birth rates of non-whites. On their website under immigration policy it says:

“According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics, at least eleven percent of all people living in Britain today were born overseas. This figure does not include their second or third generation children. All these facts point inexorably to the overwhelming and extinguishing of Britain and British identity under a tsunami of immigration. To ensure that this does not happen, and that the British people retain their homeland and identity, we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration, the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by a generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question.”

Note that the BNP refers to non-whites born in this country as immigrants and continues to offer ‘voluntary’ repatriation to immigrants who are legally here. This obviously means the BNP is opposed to non-whites in this country even if they were born here.

On the basis of this whites who support the BNP has to be questioned; do they too want non-whites to leave this country? Is the rise of the BNP in fact whites rejecting multiculturalism? These are the kind of questions which must be explored but are not because the media and mainstream political parties are afraid of the conclusions they may bring.

The one thing that the recession has shown is that racism never really went away in Britain, it was merely hiding under the surface waiting for the right moment to reappear, on May 6, black and minority ethnic communities may see the reality of this situation.